Why do leaves change?

 Why do leaves change color? That's always the first question I hear out of my kids mouths when it starts to happen. I found this fun experiment that helped it hit home!

Here are a few books I recommend reading to students to learn why:

Students always get so much out of videos too. I always go to Mystery Doug if I can! 

Alright, now for the experiment! Here is what you need:

• Clear Cups or jars
• water
• rubbing alcohol
• leaves of like color
• white tissue or coffee filter

Here's how I would start it off in my classroom...

1. I would take the kids on a leaf hunt. Give them each a plastic bag and tell them to fill it up.

2. Once inside, instruct students to sort leaves by color! 

3. Combine the classes leaves so that you have about 4 different colors of leaves grouped together.

4. Next, cut/rip those leaves into pieces. About 1/2 inch to an inch is great!

5. Put leaves into mason jars or clear cups. Only fill it about a quarter of the way up.

6. Add equal parts rubbing alcohol and water.

7. Stick a tissue in or a white coffee filter.

8. Make sure the bottom of the tissue or coffee filter is IN the solution!

9. Wait for about a day to observe the changes that happen!

A lot of these tasks can be placed into centers so that you don't need to use precious whole group time to complete them! You can save that time for discussion and learning about the WHY!

Now, onto a few pictures!

As you can see, the color from the leaves travels to the top of the tissue! The leaves in the jar actually change color. Can you believe these leaves were RED!

This is how we documented the changes. This is our before jar to show what the jar looked like before the experiment got a change to begin!

This is what the jar looked like after! So many comparisons that students can make here.

I made a few activity sheets to help you with your students with their learning.

Enjoy!! Click HERE!

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Stellaluna Obsessed!

Don't you just love the book Stellaluna? I sure do! Each year, I make little things, here and there for the book and this year, I finally went all in and finished my Stellaluna Unit! It's easy prep and fun to teach! It includes some math, literacy, writing and a little stem experiment! Better yet, you don't have to buy anything to go along with the unit (my favorite part)!

Here's a peek at our fun with Stellaluna this week!

First, we started off by reading the book! If you don't own it, you can find it here to play online.

After, we read the book, we filled out an anchor chart and pulled out some story elements. On the first day, we discussed the setting pretty heavily. This is because on the graphic organizer, I didn't just want students to tell me what the setting was, but I wanted them to tell me HOW they knew that was the setting.

For the rest of the week, we discussed the story elements even further. Here is a problem and solution example!

I am so proud of how they're explaining themselves!

Something else we worked on was short vowel words. Students got smalls square letters to cut out and a bat mat.

Then, each time they made a word, they read it and wrote it,

This little sweetie caught on quick, to stick with a word family!

After we did this whole group, I stuck it at word work for the week! This is one that can be done again and again!

We completed a few math activities!

This week, we worked a lot on finding missing addends.

We also did a write the room activity to get the kids up and moving around!

On the activity seen below, they used their bats in their ten frame on their paper to find the missing addend.

Then, one of my favorite activities we did this week was a stem one! It was a last minute idea I got when we were listening to the book being read to us online.

In the book it says, "Stellaluna could not fly because her wings were like wet paper."

So... I thought... let's test that out and see what it means!?!!

SO MUCH FUN!!!

We made guesses before we tested it out. We talked about what it meant for a bat to fly 'better.'

Afterwards, students reflected on their own, then we shared out!

-It was heavier which made it fall faster.-

-It glided down slowly.-

After doing the activity, students can then complete a fun little craft to document their learning.

To put some icing on the cake for our Stellaluna week, we sang a song, read a poem and drew a picture to illustrate our learning!

Next, week we are going to be learning all about non-fiction text and learning about actual bats! EEKK!! We will be using my Text Features Unit to pull out facts and use Text Features!

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Peek into my week(s)!

Yes, the title is plural because we are going to blast into the past (last week) and give you a glimpse of this week with my visual plans!

Last week my kids were all sorts of excited! We got to learn ALL about the sun! When I say ALL... I mean these kids wanting to know EVERYTHING! They were so intrigued with all the cool stuff that they learned. Let me tell you... it made this teacher super duper happy!!

We began the week with our schema! For the first time ever I broke students into groups and they talked about their own schema. We did not do it as a whole class (tear...they're growing up)! They discussed their schema about the sun and then we came to the rug and shared. Then, students were given booklet with general information about the sun. They read them together and discussed their new learning (another tear...)! :) A happy one!

We then came back and shared our new learning and I recorded it on our fancy dancy ancor chart! ;)

We referred to this all week during discussions and our writing!

In our All About the Sun unit we also broke into some close reading. I am not an expert on this by any means but I have been reading up on it and I am trying some of the strategies. The kids seemed to like it a lot!

I pulled these up on a flip chart on my interactive board to walk students through their close reading strategies. 

We then focused a lot on our new vocabulary! We had a vocabulary book where we kept track of our new words and we did a few extension activities!

Students created a flipbook to show their understanding of how the earth rotates throughout the day. They were facinated by this! One little guy even said, "WE CAN'T EVEN FEEL IT!!!" ha ha...you got it bud... but, that's a whole other concept! ;)

Towards the end of our unit we used everything we learned to complete an informational writing!

Then, Friday students learned how to write a persuasive letter while combining their knowledge of why we need the sun. We got a letter from the evil sun villian, "SUNVADOR!" Yes, I even said it in a deep scary voice ha ha! Then, darthvador (star wars?) was brought up.

This unit was literally one of my favorites all year! The kids responded so well and they were engaged all week long! I LOVED IT and so did they!

If you are interested in teaching your kids about the sun you can check out this unit here!

Alright, onward... Here are my plans for this week! Not going into them.. pictures will arrive someday! ;)

There is a freebie inside!! :)

Have a great week with your kiddos! I've only got 4 more weeks!! EEKK!

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Such A Fun Week!! Come Peek! :)

This week my little firsties had their wonderful standardized tests -- and can I just say that I'm glad it's over. They were worn out by the end of the weekend and ready for their weekend off! ;) -- so, was their teacher!!

Even with testing we had a super busy week! Here we go!!

1. This week in math our main focus was symmetry! I drew half of a flower and we completed a whole group lesson on symmetry together. The kids had indoor recess so I let them color the flower. :) 

Turned out pretty cute!!

 We discussed strategies to use when trying to make things symmetrical in terms of drawing. The kids tried really hard to make things the same width on each side and at the same level. I think they did a pretty good job!

After this whole group lessons the students faces were cut in half and they drew the other halves of their faces. I wish you could see them--they're so cute!

2. We squeezed in a little bit of living & non-living this week! This will be continuous lesson before and after spring break! We went over vocabulary here:

We looked at pictures of living and non-living things and then students got to draw a a picture of a living thing. Then they gave a reason to explain why it was a living thing. Love lessons like this! :) They're so open ended and I get so much creativity from the kids!

3. This week was also all about March Madness with a mix of dinosaurs!! I'll be doing a blog post on this unit when we finish it but here are some pictures for now! :)

Here we worked on predicting and learning to confirm our predictions.

These are the books we used because we learned all about fiction VS non-fiction!

This Dino-Basketball Unit can be found Here:

The literacy stations can found here:

We also dug into our basketball literacy stations to review lots of fun concepts!

4. Today, I finally finished updating my spring math station packet! There are 20 stations in here and right now it is 15% off!! Grab it while it's discounted!! 

I also finished updating another unit that I made last year and OMG I can't wait to dig into it with my kids!!

It focuses on how the sun provides energy which is a pretty big science standard that first graders need to hit! I also made it align with reading and writing standards! It's a fun and comprehensive unit!

5. Now, I just had to save the best for last! This past weekend I attended my first blogger meet-up! I literally had so much fun and I want to do it again like ASAP!! Here are some pictures!:)

 That's all for today!! I'll be back next time to share my Dino-Basketball Unit in full force!! :)

Meanwhile, enjoy your Friday & weekend! Let's pray it warms up!

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